31 January 2012

This vintage advertisement is from 1898. The schematic shows bronchiectasis in the base of both lungs.

Creosote, which we think of as something to soak railroad ties in, has a long history:

It is produced in some quantities from the burning of wood and coal in blast furnaces and fireplaces;
commonly found inside chimney flues when the wood or coal burns
incompletely, producing soot and tarry smoke, and is the compound
responsible for the preservation and the flavor of meat in the process
of smoking.

The name is derived from the Greek kréas (κρέας), meaning "flesh", and sōtēr (σωτήρ), meaning "preserver"...

It starts off being used as a meat preservative:

Soon after it was discovered and recognized as the principle of meat
smoking, wood-tar creosote became used as a replacement for the process.
Several methods were used to apply the creosote. One was to dip the
meat in pyroligneous acid or a water of diluted creosote... and within one hour the meat would
have the same quality of that of traditionally smoked preparations...
Another was to place the meat in a closed box, and place with it a few
drops of creosote in a small bottle. Because of the volatility of the
creosote, the atmosphere was filled with a vapor containing it, and it
would cover the flesh...

Medical usage dates back to before the compound was isolated:

During antiquity, pitches and resins were used commonly as medicines. Pliny mentions a variety of tar-like substances being used as medicine... Given this history, and the anti-septic properties known to creosote, it
became popular among physicians in the 19th century. A dilution of
creosote in water was sold in pharmacies as Aqua creosoti...

And re the lungs:

Creosote was suggested as a treatment for tuberculosis by Reichenbach as soon as 1833... Following that, that was a period of experimentation of different
techniques and chemicals using creosote in tuberculosis, which lasted
until about 1910, when radiation therapy looked to be a more promising
treatment... Guaiacol, instead of a full creosote solution, was suggested by Hermann Sahli
in 1887; he argued it had the active chemical of creosote and had the
advantage of being of definite composition, and with less of a less
unpleasant taste and odor...

Never heard of guaiacol? A derivative product is advertised on television every day:

The guaifenesin... is still commonly used today as an expectorant,
sold over the counter, and usually taken by mouth to assist the
bringing up of phlegm from the airways in acute respiratory tract
infections. Guaifenesin is a component of Mucinex, Robitussin DAC, Cheratussin DAC, Robitussin AC, Cheratussin AC, Benylin, DayQuil Mucous Control, Meltus, and Bidex 400.

As Paul Harvey once famously said: "And now, you know the rest of the story."

Over the past 10 years, the median price of first grade in the city has gone up by 48 percent, adjusted for inflation... Indeed, this year’s tuition at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory ($38,340 for 12th grade) and Horace Mann ($37,275 for the upper school) is higher than Harvard’s ($36,305)...

“Within one to two years, every independent school will cost more than $40,000,” said one board member at a top school... Parents are reluctant to complain, at least with their names attached,
for fear of hurting students’ standing (or siblings’ admissions
chances). But privately, many questioned paying more for the same... “People don’t want to put a price tag on their children’s future, so
they are willing to pay more than many of them can afford.”

As at most companies, a majority of the costs —
and the fastest-growing increases — come from salaries and benefits,
especially as notoriously low-paying private schools try to compete with
public school compensation.

“Some New York schools have had a 5, 10 or as high as 30 percent
increase in the cost of their medical plans,” said Mark Lauria, the
executive director of the New York State Association of Independent Schools.

And paying teachers is only a piece of the puzzle. Léman Manhattan Preparatory School
has a gym whose floor is cleaned twice a day. The Trinity School has
three theaters, six art studios, two tennis courts, a pool and a diving
pool.

When I was in high school, I'll bet the gym floor was cleaned once a week before home games. Maybe. There's more at the New York Times, plus over 500 comments.

Posted just for fun; this isn't a new discovery, but reports about it surface intermittently. I would love for it to be a UFO, but have no belief that that's what it is. But I do love oceans, and treasure stories, and anomalous discoveries.

There’s a 1976 recording of James Galway playing Paganini’s “Moto
Perpetuo” on his golden flute, in which you never once hear him draw
breath. At the time, it was lauded as an almost superhuman feat; a virtuosic
example of circular breathing, a technique that allows wind players to
simultaneously inhale air through the nose while breathing it out
through the mouth. (Galway later confessed the recording had been
spliced together.) In 1997, saxophonist Kenny G used circular breathing
to play a continuous, unbroken note for a total of 45 minutes and 47
seconds, earning him a mention in the Guinness Book of Records.

Her inhalations, too, became part of the music. Contemporary composers
like Fujikura, says Chase, “have started to think of breath as an
ornament and as an expressive device in its own right, whether it’s a
subtle, moody breath or the dramatic gesture of an inhalation. Some
breaths are even notated in the music: it increases the drama.”

In the video, Kenny G demonstrates the technique of circular breathing.

We are concerned here with mythical beasts... This one is
classical Roman, having first been described by Pliny the Elder. He gave
it the name of eale — we don’t know why: the word turns up nowhere else in classical literature — and included it as an animal of Ethiopia...

Following Pliny’s description, the yale is usually shown in
illustrations as a mixture of bits of other animals, a chimera, with the
snout of a wild boar, the body and head of an antelope, and a couple of
long pointed horns of indeterminate origin.
The beast turns up in English heraldry in late medieval times, with its form borrowed from Pliny...

The connection with Cambridge University comes via Margaret of Beaufort,
the mother of King Henry VII and reputedly the richest woman in
medieval England. She founded two of the colleges of the university —
Christ’s and St John’s — at the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Because of this, her arms, including yales, may still be seen over the
gatehouses of the two colleges [above]...

Yale University has borrowed the heraldic beast as a play on its own
name. Two in chains flank the portico of Davenport College, one is
depicted on the official banner of the president of the university and
the campus radio station uses a yale as a logo. The university was
actually named in memory of Elihu Yale, a governor of the British East
India Company. His name comes from Iâl, a place in north Wales, which in
turn is from the Welsh word for a fertile or arable upland.

Do you think diamonds are intrinsically valuable? Read these excerpts from a superb article at The Atlantic:

The diamond invention—the creation of the idea that
diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem—is a
relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade. Until
the late nineteenth century, diamonds were found only in a few
riverbeds in India and in the jungles of Brazil, and the entire world
production of gem diamonds amounted to a few pounds a year. In 1870,
however, huge diamond mines were discovered near the Orange River, in
South Africa, where diamonds were soon being scooped out by the ton.
Suddenly, the market was deluged with diamonds. The British financiers
who had organized the South African mines quickly realized that their
investment was endangered; diamonds had little intrinsic value—and their
price depended almost entirely on their scarcity. The financiers feared
that when new mines were developed in South Africa, diamonds would
become at best only semiprecious gems.

The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no
alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would
be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of
scarcity of diamonds. The instrument they created, in 1888, was called
De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., incorporated in South Africa...

De Beers proved to be the most successful cartel arrangement in the
annals of modern commerce. While other commodities, such as gold,
silver, copper, rubber, and grains, fluctuated wildly in response to
economic conditions, diamonds have continued, with few exceptions, to
advance upward in price every year since the Depression...

The diamond invention is far more than a monopoly for fixing diamond
prices; it is a mechanism for converting tiny crystals of carbon into
universally recognized tokens of wealth, power, and romance. To achieve
this goal, De Beers had to control demand as well as supply. Both women
and men had to be made to perceive diamonds not as marketable precious
stones but as an inseparable part of courtship and married life...

Jack mackerel, rich in oily protein, is manna to a hungry planet, a
staple in Africa. Elsewhere, people eat it unaware; much of it is
reduced to feed for aquaculture and pigs. It can take more than 5 kilos
of jack mackerel to raise a kilo of farmed salmon. Yet stocks have dropped from
an estimated 30 million metric tons to less than 3 million in two
decades. The world’s largest trawlers, after depleting other oceans, now
head south toward the edge of Antarctica to compete for what is left...

Meantime, industrial fleets bound only by voluntary restraints
compete in what amounts to a free-for-all in no man’s water at the
bottom of the world. From 2006 through 2011, scientists estimate, jack mackerel stocks declined by 63 percent...

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says that global fishing fleets “are 2.5 times larger than needed.” That estimate was based on a 1998 report; since then, fleets have expanded...

Chile now has only sardines in relative abundance, he said. “We have no
more jack mackerel or hake or anchoveta. Fisheries that produced a
million or more tons a year have simply run out from overfishing by big
companies.”..

Album says government support has created so much capacity that super
trawlers must fish to their maximum for return on investment. “These
vessels roam the oceans for any available fish, causing overfishing and
unbearable pressure on governments trying to manage resources,” he
said.

More at the link, which is the third installment in a series entitled "Looting the Seas."

30 January 2012

Thylacosmilus at first glance looks much like the famous Smilodon (sabertooth tiger)... This animal is very far removed from Smilodon, it is not even a placental mammal. It is a metatherian (marsupials are the living metatherians) more closely related to kangaroos, koalas, wombats, etc than to the saber-toothed tiger.

The similarity between Thylacosmilus and Smilodon is an excellent example of convergent evolution - two distantly relating forms converging upon a simular morphology and life habitat. There are an three other examples of mammals that have developed saber-teeth- in fact most of the last 65 million years had some large cat-like saber-toothed mammal present, the modern biota is the outlier.

Thylacosmilus went extinct roughly 3 million years ago, closely coinciding with the formation of the land bridge linking the Americas. Animals from North America emigrated south and those from South America journeyed north; this fauna exchange is referred to as the Great American Interchange. It is at this time we start to find Smilodon fossils in South America. It is thought that the arrival of this relatively larger predator (the largest Smilodon was twice the size of the largest Thylacosmilus) may have been what drove the only known marsupial saber-toothed form to extinction.

What puzzled me was that prominent flange angling downward on the front of the mandible (apparently serving to "protect the large canines", presumably from lateral blows). But I'm not sure with the flange there how the saber-canines can penetrate the victim's flesh (?).

Amy, a 20-year-old brunette at the University of California at Irvine,
was on her laptop when she got an IM from a random guy nicknamed
mistahxxxrightme, asking her for webcam sex. Out of the blue, like that.
Amy told the guy off, but he IM'd again, saying he knew all about her,
and to prove it he started describing her dorm room, the color of her
walls, the pattern on her sheets, the pictures on her walls. "You have a
pink vibrator," he said. It was like Amy'd slipped into a stalker
movie. Then he sent her an image file. Amy watched in horror as the
picture materialized on the screen: a shot of her in that very room,
naked on the bed, having webcam sex with James...

Amy decided to call the cops herself. But the instant she phoned the
dispatcher, a message chimed on her screen. It was from the hacker. "I
know you just called the police," he wrote. She panicked. How could he
possibly know?..

The campus police were in no position to handle a case like this.
Whoever devised the malware—a sophisticated program capable of dodging
antivirus software—clearly had a leg up on university cops. The task of
hunting him down fell to agents Tanith Rogers and Jeff Kirkpatrick of
the FBI's cyber program in Los Angeles...

Hackers had been accessing cameras here and there for a while. But
Mijangos started thinking big: He decided to weaponize them on an
unprecedented scale... As soon as she opened the file, Mijangos was in—he had access to her
every file, every photo, and could even keep a log of every keystroke,
which meant every password. But that wasn't all. Mijangos hit a few
buttons, then watched in awe as his screen filled with an image taken by
her webcam...

He says it didn't take long for word to get out that he was the go-to
guy for anyone looking to spy on a girlfriend or wife. For $150, he'd
infect the target's computer, then send his clients links so they could
snoop themselves. Mijangos knew a few of his clients were "just
perverts" spying on some unsuspecting stranger, but their money was just
as good...

Surströmming... is a northern Swedish dish consisting of fermented Baltic herring. Surströmming is sold in cans, which often bulge during shipping and storage, due to the continued fermentation. When opened, the contents release a strong and sometimes overwhelming odor, which explains why the dish is often eaten outdoors...

[One] explanation of the origins of this method of preservation is that it began long ago, when brining food was quite expensive due to the cost of salt. When fermentation was used, just enough salt was required to keep the fish from rotting. The salt raises the osmotic pressure of the brine above the zone where bacteria responsible for rotting (decomposition of proteins) can prosper and prevents decomposition of fish proteins into oligopeptides and amino acids. Instead the osmotic conditions enable the Haloanaerobium bacteria to prosper and decompose the fish glycogen into organic acids, giving it the sour (acidic) properties...

Because surströmming today contains higher levels of dioxins and PCBs than the permitted levels for fish in the EU, Sweden has had exceptions to these rules. The exception was 2002 to 2011, but an application for renewal of the exemption has been raised to the EU...

In April 2006, several major airlines (such as Air France and British Airways) banned the fish citing that the pressurised cans of fish are potentially explosive. The sale of the fish was subsequently discontinued in Stockholm's international airport. Those who produce the fish have called the airlines' decision "culturally illiterate," claiming that it is a "myth that the tinned fish can explode.

Text from Wikipedia. Photo: Swedish "klämma" with surströmming, potatoes and red onion on a "tunnbröd" with butter besides a glass of milk.

To make an alien brain hemorrhage cocktail, fill a shot glass halfway
with peach schnapps. Gently pour Bailey's Irish Cream on top. After the
shot is almost full, carefully add a small amount of blue curacao.
After it settles, add a few drops of grenadine syrup.

Photo and instructions from Latin Rapper, via Neatorama. I presume you'd have to be already drunk to drink this.

That faculties are liberal is beyond dispute. In a rigorous survey,
University of British Columbia sociology Prof. Neil Gross concluded,
"professors currently compose the most liberal major occupational group
in American society."..

Gross and Solon Simmons of George Mason University surveyed more than
1,400 full-time professors at more than 900 American institutions. Only
19.7 percent of professors identified themselves as "any shade of
conservative" (compared with 31.9 percent of the general population),
while 62.2 percent identified themselves as some flavor of liberal
(compared with 23.3 percent of Americans overall).

Gross found variation between disciplines. Social sciences and
humanities contained the highest concentration of liberals.
Conservatives were as numerous as liberals in business, health sciences,
computer science and engineering.

What compels people to get a dog only to keep it isolated outside, away from the family?... They are animals born to be part of a social structure, a pack or a
family, yet this is denied them. They spend their lives on the outside,
looking in.
The experts say many of these dogs will never really bond with owners who interact with them so little...

I have always had difficulty understanding why people want to keep dogs
outside. If keeping a beautiful house and yard are of the utmost
importance to you, then don't get a dog. If you know someone in your
family can't abide a dog in the house, for whatever reason, then don't
get a dog. If you can't let a dog be part of your family, then don't get
a dog.

You don't get the benefits of companionship from a dog you see so
little. You don't even get much in the way of protection from the pet
who has no access to the house. And don't count on outdoor dogs as an
early warning system. These animals often become such indiscriminate
barkers that you couldn't tell from their sound whether the dogs are
barking at a prowler or at a toddler riding a tricycle down the street.
Besides, people who keep outdoor dogs seem to become quite good at
ignoring the noise they make, as any angry neighbor can vouch.

Outdoor dogs often become a problem to their owners. Bored and lonely,
these animals develop any number of bad habits. They dig craters in the
yard. They bark endlessly day and night. They become chewers of outdoor
furniture, sprinkler heads and siding. And sometimes, without the
socialization all dogs need, they become aggressive, ready to bite
anyone who comes into their territory.

If you're considering getting a puppy or dog with the intent of keeping
him exclusively outside, please reconsider -- for the animal's sake as
well as your own and your neighbors'.

When I was growing up, a small family dog (springer spaniel) was allowed indoors, but our larger dogs (retrievers, labs) had a doghouse in the garage with access to the outdoors. Nowadays I see large dogs routinely kept indoors by neighbors and relatives.

Steve Hornsby from Bournemouth said the 3cm diameter balls came raining down late on Thursday afternoon during a hail storm. He found about a dozen of the balls in his garden. He said:
"[They're] difficult to pick up, I had to get a spoon and flick them
into a jam jar."

The Met Office said the jelly-like substance was "not meteorological".

Mr Hornsby said he was keeping the balls in his fridge while he tried to find out what they were.

My family ties to St. Olaf College go back to its founding in 1874, so it was a distinct pleasure for me last night to have the opportunity to take my 93-year-old mother to hear the opening concert in this year's centennial tour by the St. Olaf Choir. Mom remembers hearing them on campus in the 1930s, and watches every Christmas concert on PBS.

The choir's performance calendar takes them on to Indianapolis, Charleston, Charlotte, Raleigh, Newport News, Bethesda, Cleveland, Urbana, and Chicago in the next two weeks. The concerts present a mix of ancient and modern music, both sacred and secular/folk. If you like choral music, these are world-class quality performances.

An interesting column in the StarTribune uses a series of calendars to depict the days available for teaching grade-school students. Above is a calendar of the year (arranged Sept to August), with the summer break blacked out.

Here is the calendar after blacking out weekends and major holidays:

There are some additional calendars at the link, ending with this one, which also blacks out professional development days, conferences, common holidays, spring break, and days for state and standardized testing:

There are only 162 days that wind up not being blacked out. Author Jeremy Olson asks, "What am I doing as a parent to supplement the apparently limited time in which my kids are at school to learn?"

The calendars also provide fuel for the endless arguments over teacher salaries.

One study included 30 healthy people who had
psilocybin inserted into their blood while magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) scanners measured changes in their brain activity. The scans
revealed that psilocybin caused decreased activity in what the
researchers described as the brain's "hub" regions -- areas especially
well-connected with other areas. That study was published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The
second study included 10 healthy volunteers and found that psilocybin
boosted their recall of personal memories and their emotional well-being
for up to two weeks. The researchers said this suggests that psilocybin
might prove useful as an adjunct to psychotherapy. That study will be
published online Thursday in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

A
study published last year found that people with anxiety who received a
single psilocybin treatment had lower depression scores six months
later.

In the 1970s, Psilocybe cubensis mushroom were readily available in rural areas around Dallas-Fort Worth. The best places to search for them were cattle pastures, because the 'shrooms had an affinity for growing in or near "cowpies." When you broke the stem, a slight bluish "bruise" was helpful in confirming the identity. It produced a pleasant psychedelic effect, lasting for a couple hours, but was a bit hard to titrate since the potency of the mushrooms wasn't always predictable.

We have in a kitchen drawer somewhere a couple stretchable cloth "sleeves" that can be slipped over a cold can or glass in the summer to absorb the sweating and thus protect furniture; this is the first time I've seen the concept applied to wine glasses.

These felt coasters come in different colors, which allows party guests to keep track of whose glass is whose.

A reminder from iWatch that the much-talked-about budgetary changes are actually smaller increases, not actual decreases.

Actually, describing it as a cut is a misnomer. The administration's ten-year plan actually calls for an increase
in the national security budget over the next decade — but it would
scale back the 18 percent boost previously set for that period...

Before Obama announced his plan, the Pentagon was counting on annual
budget increases over the next 10 years -- totaling roughly $500
billion, according to Panetta. While the new plan calls for its
spending to drop in 2013, the budget would then revert to growth,
administration officials say. They have not said what the average annual
increase would be from 2017 to 2021, but two senior administration
officials who asked not to be named said the result after 10 years would
still be a larger budget, even after inflation is taken into account.

That
means Obama’s proposed changes will shift actual spending less than one
percent annually. If approved, the change would be smaller than the
genuine reductions that followed the Korean War (20 percent), the
Vietnam War (30 percent) and the Cold War (30 percent)...

Obama said on January 5 that after his proposed changes, U.S.
military spending will still be “larger than roughly the next 10 nations
combined.” He did not list them, but those countries are, in
rough order (according to data compiled by the International Institute
of Strategic Studies and the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute), China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Saudi Arabia,
Germany, India, Italy, and Brazil. Experts have complained that Obama understated
the American predominance, by not saying “the next 17 or 18 nations
combined,” but China’s military budget is opaque, making this
calculation imprecise...

But there is no dispute that the higher capabilities of modern weaponry
make simple numerical comparisons inadequate. Panetta’s airplane tally,
for example, only counted manned airplanes, while 41 percent of the
service’s winged inventory now consists of unmanned drones...

One of my memorable possessions as a child in the 1950s was a "woodburning" toy similar to the one shown here (scroll down). It was basically a soldering iron, packaged with some simple drawings on wood that you would trace over with the heated tip, creating your own work of art (accompanied by a very satisfying acrid smell).

The process has been practiced by a number of cultures including the Egyptians and some African tribes since the dawn of recorded time... It was known in China from the time of the Han dynasty, where it was known as "Fire Needle Embroidery". During the Victorian era, the invention of pyrography machines sparked a widespread interest in the craft, and it was at this time that the term "pyrography" was coined (previously the name "pokerwork" had been most widely used)... Pyrography is a traditional folk art in many European countries, including Romania, Hungary, as well as countries such as Argentina in South America.

There's lots more to read re pyrography and pokerwork. The most comprehensive source I've found this morning is at Antique Art in Pyrography, whence the following old engraving:

"Years
and years ago, when art and conviviality went hand in hand in England,
and when the tavern was a clubhouse, it was the custom of the artists to
exercise their passing inspirations on the walls around them. A
poker, heated red-hot in the fireplace, was their tool. With it they
sketched faces and figures—a memory of a scene of nature—an idea for a
new ornament—a cartoon of some public man."

See also the Powerhouse Museum's description of Australian folk pokerwork (1930s wall plaque with bush landscape shown).

Health-care related posts seems to elicit the most vigorous and conflicting comments on this blog, so here's a little grist for the mill, from a column in the New York Times:

The bed linens were by Frette, Italian purveyors of high-thread-count
sheets to popes and princes. The bathroom gleamed with polished marble.
Huge windows displayed panoramic East River views. And in the hush of
her $2,400 suite, a man in a black vest and tie proffered an elaborate
menu and told her, “I’ll be your butler.”

It was Greenberg 14 South, the elite wing on the new penthouse floor of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell
hospital. Pampering and décor to rival a grand hotel, if not a Downton
Abbey, have long been the hallmark of such “amenities units,” often
hidden behind closed doors at New York’s premier hospitals. But the
phenomenon is escalating here and around the country, health care design
specialists say, part of an international competition for wealthy
patients willing to pay extra, even as the federal government cuts back
hospital reimbursement in pursuit of a more universal and affordable
American medical system..

A waterfall, a grand piano and the image of a giant orchid grace the
soaring ninth floor atrium of McKeen, leading to refurbished rooms that,
like those in the hospital’s East 68th Street penthouse, cost patients
$1,000 to $1,500 a day, and can be combined. That fee is on top of
whatever base rate insurance pays to the hospital, or the roughly $4,500
a day that foreigners are charged, according to the hospital’s
international services department...

In Eleven West’s library on a recent Friday, Nancy Hemenway, a senior
financial services executive, was reading the paper in a spa-style
bathrobe. “I was supposed to be in Buenos Aires last week taking tango
lessons, but unfortunately I hurt my back, so I’m here with my
concierge,” she said.

“I’m perfectly at home here — totally private, totally catered,” she
added. “I have a primary-care physician who also acts as ringmaster for
all my other doctors. And I see no people in training — only the best of
the best.”

That last comment reminds me that some years ago a midwestern university hospital (which I will leave unnamed) had an upper floor reserved for wealthy patients, with posh accommodations, special food, and innumerable amenities. When physicians were on morning rounds, the students and housestaff would stay behind while the attendings went to see their private patients.

However, at night if there was an emergency and the attending was in a distant suburb, the housestaff and fellows were called and had to correct problems with electrolyte imbalance, improve inappropriate ventilator settings, or detect missed diagnoses. Many of the attending physicians were less procedurally competent (and frankly less practically knowledgeable) than the "physicians in training," who joked (among themselves) that the only good thing for the patients in the top floor suite was that the location was "close to a hospital."

One final salient comment from the Times story:

“These kinds of patients, they’re paying cash — they’re the best kind of
patient to have,” she added. “Theoretically, it trickles down.”

This is all very complicated, re the finances, re the medical implications, re the ethics etc. I'll defer any additional commentary; there's much more in the Times and in a related story in Salon.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s 1851 purchase and subsequent
renovation of Balmoral Castle in the Scottish Highlands caused a fad for
plaid to sweep the fashion world. Fine tartans in wool and silk became
the most desired fashion fabrics for all ages and styles of dress.

At an engagement party last weekend, my husband enjoyed a Beck's. He
decided he would like to enjoy another and so opened this bottle, took a
sip and cringed. His beer tasted awful and he wiped off what looked
like dirt from the bottle cap. He held the beer to the light and the
liquid was murky through the green glass there was something floating in
it. We go in to the kitchen, pour the beer down the sink and something
slipped out. I turned it over and it kind of looked like a mushroom and
smelled a whole lot like shit. This image is the bottle and the offending object.

Answer below the fold (it's not offensive - just giving you a moment to ponder...)

Number of letters from Americans President Barack Obama reads each evening: 10

Number of staffers in the Corespondence Office responsible for seelecting those letters from the 11,000 received each day: 7

There's a lot to ponder there. First of all, it's not a Democrat/Republican thing - the same must have been happening since the office of the presidency was established. But look how it must have ramped up - now 11 thousand letters every day.

And seven staff persons just to sort through that mail. One knee-jerk reaction would be that this is an example of how government has become bloated. But on the other hand many of these letters are from people with genuine concerns, and probably the staff forward items to relevant congressmen or government agencies.

Still - 11,000 letters every day. And how many emails? Interesting to think about.

26 January 2012

I had heard that a revision was in the works, and it has been eagerly awaited by gardeners.

The 2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is the standard by which
gardeners and growers can determine which plants are most likely to
thrive at a location. The map is based on the average annual minimum
winter temperature, divided into 10-degree F zones.

The embed above is a static image, but if you go to this USDA page, you can access an interactive map with detailed state maps.

Most locations in the US are now in warmer zones; we've gone from 4b to 5a in just the last ten years.

After a recent rash of robberies involving people trying to sell items
on the web site Craigslist, Milwaukee police on Monday encouraged people
to conclude their transactions at perhaps one of the safest places in
town - the local police station...

A 33-year-old man wanting to sell a cell phone met a suspect at the
gas station. The suspect got into the victim's car and forced him drive
to the back of the parking lot, where he threatened the victim with a
small revolver. He went through the victim's pockets and took $40. After
a fight, the robber and another suspect stole two cell phones from the
victim.
Other robberies of people wanting to sell iPads and vehicles happened Jan. 15 and 19...

"This is nothing new. It's happening all over the country," police
officer Lisa Staffold said Monday. "The media has deemed it 'robbery by
appointment' because you're posting ads, you're selling your iPhones,
your iPads, your vehicles, and when you go to a meeting location, you're
being robbed."

The crimes are done by either pretend-buyers who show up to rob the
seller of the advertised item, or pretend-sellers, who want to steal
money from the buyer.

Police hope to put a stop to the robberies by having sellers and buyers meet at a safe place. "If they
don't want to meet you at a safe place, if they don't want to meet you
at a police district, that should be a red flag, an indicator: Don't do
business with that individual," Staffold said.

The Burgess Shale continues to produce amazing fossils. PhysOrg has a summary:

Officially named Siphusauctum gregarium, fossils reveal a
tulip-shaped creature that is about the length of a dinner knife
(approximately 20 centimetres or eight inches) and has a unique filter
feeding system.

Siphusauctum has a long stem, with a calyx – a bulbous
cup-like structure – near the top which encloses an unusual filter
feeding system and a gut. The animal is thought to have fed by filtering
particles from water actively pumped into its calyx through small
holes... Most interesting is that this feeding system appears to be unique among animals.

Siphusauctum gregarium looked like a tulip, about 20cm (or
8ins) long, filter feeding from the floor of the sea. The body or
"calyx" is enclosed by a sheath, with six small filtering holes and a
terminal anus. It has a large stomach, followed by a conical gut and
straight section of intestine. Six radially-symmetrical sections contain
the filtering combs... Only the stomach, and
anus of the digestive tract show any phylogenetic relationships, but
exactly which relationship is up in the air. Hence the new family, new
genus, new species, in fact, new everything.

The lawsuits claim that the largest
suppliers of diamonds in the world—De Beers S.A. and its associated
companies—violated antitrust, unfair competition, and consumer-protection laws
by monopolizing diamond supplies, conspiring to fix, raise, and control diamond
prices, and disseminating false and misleading advertising...

And the company will pay millions of dollars -

...the Settlement provides
that the Defendants will pay a total of $295 million for the benefit of Class
Members plus up to $7 million for the costs of providing notice of the
Settlement terms to the Indirect Purchaser Class.. The Settlement provides that $22.5 million will be paid to
Direct Purchaser Class Members who submit valid claims, and $272.5 million will
be paid to Indirect Purchaser Class Members who submit valid claims.

The payments go to resellers and customers, the latter defined as -

All persons
located in the United States who purchased any diamond or diamond jewelry or
other products containing gem diamonds for personal use and not for resale
between January 1, 1994 and March 31, 2006. For example, Consumers include
people who purchased diamond jewelry to wear or to give as a gift.

However, while the "sightholders" (companies reselling the diamonds) get an estimated US $173,000 each, consumers fare less well -

25 January 2012

The number of limousines owned by the federal government has risen by 73% during the first two years of the Obama administration, as reported at the Center for Public Integrity's IWatch website:

Most of the increase was recorded in Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

Obama
administration officials said most of the increase reflects an enhanced
effort to protect diplomats and other government officials in a
dangerous world. But a watchdog group says the abundance of limos sends
the wrong message in the midst of a budget crisis...

According to General Services Administration data,
the number of limousines in the federal fleet increased from 238 in
fiscal 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration, to 412
in 2010. Much of the 73 percent increase—111 of the 174 additional
limos—took place in fiscal 2009, more than eight months of which
corresponded with Obama’s first year in office. However, some of those
purchases could reflect requests made by the Bush administration during
an appropriations process that would have begun in the spring of 2008...

“The categories in the Fleet Report are overly broad, and the term
'limousine' is not defined,” adding that “vehicles represented as
limousines can range from protective duty vehicles to sedans.”..

The department said it defines a limo as a vehicle that carries a VIP or
“other protectee,” rather than by the type of car, but said most of its
limos are Cadillac DTSs, which cost the taxpayer more than $60,000 for a
2011 base model...

If the data is [sic] correct, some federal employees who once rode in style
now face more proletarian transportation options. The Department of
Veterans Affairs, for example, ran a fleet of 21 limousines in 2008
under George W. Bush, according to the fleet report. It now makes do
with only one. The Government Printing Office also lost all of its six
limos between 2009 and 2010. The VA and the Government Printing Office
did not respond to calls for comment.

- a type of emergency currency issued in the Northwest following the start
of the Civil War. Issued at Minneapolis October 10th, 1862. Name of
issuer is R.J.Mendenhall. Denomination is 5 cents.

Wikipedia has more on shinplasters, including a suggestion re the etymology -

According to the Oxford English Dictionary,
the name comes from the quality of the paper, which was so cheap that
with a bit of starch it could be used to make paper-mâché-like plasters
to go under socks and warm shins.

- and a description of similar local currencies in Canada and Australia (where they were also called "calabashes)."

In some places they formed the core of a company shop economy (Truck system), circulating as private currencies.
They were often of such low quality that they could not be hoarded, and
shopkeepers off the property would not take them, as they would
deteriorate into illegibility before they could be redeemed.

There are tales of unscrupulous shopkeepers and others baking or
otherwise artificially aging their calabashes given as change to
travelers so that they crumbled to uselessness before they could be
redeemed.

Instead of asking for résumés, the New York venture-capital firm—which
has invested in Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga and other technology
companies—asked applicants to send links representing their "Web
presence," such as a Twitter account or Tumblr blog...

Companies are increasingly relying on social networks such as LinkedIn,
video profiles and online quizzes to gauge candidates' suitability for a
job. While most still request a résumé as part of the application
package, some are bypassing the staid requirement altogether...

The emerald, discovered at Carnaiba, in the emerald-producing province
of Bahia, Brazil, in August, 1974, made its way to Palo Alto via a local
gem trader with whom we had worked and partnered for many years. He
took it to Hong Kong for carving, where a team of four carvers was
commissioned to sculpt the design of Tao Heaven...

The original weight of the emerald was 62 pounds,
or over 140,000 carats. Its dimensions then were approximately 16 1/2"
high, 14" wide, and 7" deep... the final weight after carving is 86,000 carats, or 38 pounds. The excess material ended up as dust on the studio floor...

The pair of images above shows a site on the Siberian tundra near
Russia’s Yenisey River in the summers of 1966 (top) and 2009 (lower).
In the 43 years that passed between the first image and the second,
shrubs colonized virtually all of the previously open tundra surrounding
a cluster of lakes...

At the site Frost studies, the tundra is often patterned with bald
spots—circles of bare ground where seasonal frost heave can uproot plant
seedlings. These frost circles, sometimes called “frost boils,” give
the tundra in the top center of the images its speckled look. The bare
spots create an open canvas for shrubs to colonize, presuming they can
withstand the seasonal frost heave. At this site, the colonizing shrubs
are usually alders...

The conversion of tundra to dense, tall shrubland triggers a cascade of
changes in how the ecosystem functions. Observations from Europe,
Alaska, and Siberia in recent decades have shown plant communities
became less diverse as mosses, lichens, and other shorter-growing plants
disappeared under the shade created by shrubs. The loss of lichens, in
particular, could pose a problem for caribou and reindeer, which forage
on them extensively.

The change from tundra to shrubland can also affect the thawing of permafrost...

...her family will be laying her to rest in her native Canada — and
pleading for money to help cover the estimated $550,000 they owe for the
medical care she received at University of Utah Hospital over nine
days.

The irony is that had the accident occurred in Canada... her care would have been covered
because, unlike the U.S., Canada has a system of universal coverage...

It is clear the family needs help. Not only are they grieving, they are
facing financial ruin, simply because Sarah Burke’s accident was in the
United States of America.

And, in case you are wondering about who pays for Gabrielle Giffords' rehab, that is discussed at ScienceBlogs' Pump Handle public health blog -

"Congresswoman Giffords was injured while she was on the job and her
rehabilitation is covered by workers' compensation under the Federal
Employees' Compensation Act."...

The type of acute rehabilitation she receives - involving speech,
occupational and physical rehab - costs about $8,000 a day, according to
the Brain Injury Association of America. Post-acute rehabilitation can
range in cost from $600 to $2,500 daily. The expenses leave the
treatment options well out of reach for most patients whose insurers
won't pay for the services.

24 January 2012

"The opal is about 30 cms in length with a height of 15-20 cms and a 4 cm
thickness. Its estimated value is at least 1 million dollars USD... Historically, the largest opal found so far was just 6,100 carats in size. The current one is nearly ten times that size."

Photo and text via JustLuxe. I often see opals at rock and mineral shows, but have never owned one or understood their geology, so I had to look up the details -

Matrix opals are a type of boulder opal and are
found as part of a host rock, called Boulder ironstone. They contain
opal randomly distributed through the rock. The boulder ironstone with
the precious opal inclusions are cut as one piece, giving an appearance
similar to what you see when you look at the night sky, except that the
‘stars’ in this case are flecks of glories opal color.

Different types of matrix opals come from a variety of fields.
Boulder matrix comes from the Queensland fields in the northern part of
the opal regions in Australia. There is another form of matrix opal
from Andamooka in South Australia which is treated to give it a darker
background. The specimen is soaked in sugar solution and boiled in acid,
which causes carbon to get deposited in the spaces in the rock, giving
it a dark or black opal appearance.

From Opalmine, which has pix of examples for sale. Rock and mineral collecting has changed a lot since I was a kid in the 50s; nowadays much of what is available for purchase has been altered chemically or with heat or with radiation. But with worldwide transportation much improved, there are now some amazing finds and products available.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys in the court-martial of Staff Sgt.
Frank Wuterich, accused in the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqis in 2005,
announced an agreement Monday to settle the case. Wuterich will plead guilty to a single count of negligent dereliction
of duty. Other charges were dropped. No announcement was made on what
kind of discharge Wuterich would receive...

Wuterich, 31, was accused of manslaughter,
assault and dereliction of duty for allegedly leading his squad on a
bloody rampage on the morning of Nov. 19, 2005, after a roadside bomb
killed one Marine and injured two in the Euphrates River town of
Haditha.

When the smoke cleared, Wuterich's squad had killed 24 Iraqis, including
three women and seven children, in a fruitless effort to find the
gunmen that the Marines believed was firing on them from a house near
the bomb blast.

Wuterich's case is the last to be settled among the eight Marines
accused in the killings: four enlisted Marines accused of firing the
fatal shots and four officers accused of not investigating thoroughly. Six cases were dropped, one officer was acquitted at court-martial...

The hearing officer at Wuterich's preliminary hearing in 2007 predicted
the prosecution would fail because of inconsistent testimony from
witnesses and poor forensics.

The maximum sentence is three months in the brig.

More on the Haditha killings. I'll withhold comment, but not block them for the post.

Edible Geography notes that the ratios of the ingredients are prominently listed on each product "so that you can easily find the total dissolved solids in such premium sparkling waters as Perrier, Badoît, and Vichy."

So... you can make your own.

Lersch has created a mineral water calculator
— a handy downloadable spreadsheet into which you simply enter your tap
water composition (optional, but recommended for best results; your
water company should provide this upon request) and select your
preferred mineral water, in order to generate a printable ingredients
list of minerals and salts.

Some ingredients ("food grade sodium bromide") are difficult to find, but then all you need to do is carbonate the mineral water (which affects the pH). Details at the link.

The last time was in the autumn of 2006. But after orbiting the earth for less than a year, it departed. Details via PhysOrg:

Temporary satellites are a result of the gravitational pull of Earth and the Moon.
Both bodies pull on one another and also pull on anything else in
nearby space. The most common objects that get pulled in by the
Earth-Moon system’s gravity are near Earth objects (NEOs) — comets and
asteroids are nudged by the outer planets and end up in orbits that
bring them into Earth’s neighbourhood...

They found that the Earth-Moon system captures NEOs quite frequently.
“At any given time, there should be at least one natural Earth satellite
of 1-meter diameter orbiting the Earth,” the team said. These NEOs orbit the Earth for about ten months, enough time to make about three orbits, before leaving.

One implication is that the study of the cosmos can be facilitated by visiting/sampling these temporary moons rather than trying to access more distant bodies.

The airplane approaches the runway at a "crabbed" angle, to offset the
wind -- then at practically the last instant before touchdown the pilot
uses the rudder to "kick" the plane into alignment with the runway, so
when the wheels make contact they are pointed straight ahead.

For the genesis of the term we must go back to medieval England. Truck had been borrowed from Old French troquer, which meant to obtain goods by barter or to give in exchange. It still does in expressions such as truck farm for a market garden, because its produce was often bartered rather than sold. Truck
here has nothing to do with vehicles; that sense comes from a different
source, a Latin word meaning the sheaf of a pulley, later a small
wooden wheel.

In order to barter you had to negotiate with the person you were dealing with and truck
later extended to refer to dealing or trading in all sorts of
commodities. By the seventeenth century it had broadened and weakened
into the idea of communication in general or of being on familiar terms
with another person.

I had always assumed the term "truck farm" referred to vehicles used to transport the produce. You learn something every day.

The graph above shows two decades of the trending of debt in ten countries. Some will be surprised to note that the U.S. is not the top blue line - that's the United Kingdom ! And while the U.S. has started to "deleverage" since the 2008 crisis, for other countries the line is still rising.

Also of interest to me was this second graph, which breaks total national debt into its component parts. In the U.S. since 2008, financial institutions have reduced their debt by 17%, household debt has fallen 11%, and corporate debt is down 7%. Only government (presumably fed+state+local) debt has risen. It may be that the latter has been necessary in order for the former three to be facilitated; I don't understand economics well enough to comment on that. But I do think these two graphs are important.

23 January 2012

A group of volunteers headed to a village in the Tula Region to visit an
elderly lady who they heard needed wood to burn in her stove or in
other words were in trouble. Entering her home, they found her sitting
next to the stove with tears in her eyes. It was very cold and it
smelled like dampness...

This is the first of about twenty images in a photoessay at English Russia. It does have a happy ending, and raises questions about society's priorites.

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

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